Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says the Gov­ern­ment and par­tic­u­lar­ly his min­istry, will be con­sid­er­ing all op­tions to se­cure the coun­try as US mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ties con­tin­ue in the re­gion.

Alexan­der re­spond­ed to sug­ges­tions from for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, who on Fri­day shared a video urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to strength­en lo­cal mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties in a bid to bet­ter se­cure the coun­try.

Grif­fith re­ferred to past com­ments from Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who ac­cused T&T’s Gov­ern­ment of aid­ing US mil­i­tary forces in pro­vok­ing their coun­try.

Grif­fith em­pha­sised that ad­di­tion­al mea­sures were need­ed to pre­pare for any po­ten­tial hos­til­i­ty, in­clud­ing equip­ping the T&T Air Guard with he­li­copters and fixed-wing air­craft.

Speak­ing with re­porters at a chil­dren’s Christ­mas par­ty host­ed at his El Do­ra­do Road con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day, Alexan­der main­tained that he was not re­spon­si­ble for the de­fence force and could not speak as to whether Grif­fith’s sug­ges­tions would be im­ple­ment­ed but not­ed from his port­fo­lio that all pos­si­bil­i­ties to se­cure the coun­try would be con­sid­ered.

“Peo­ple will have their opin­ion. We need to look at it from where we (Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty) sit and what strate­gies we can use, which we think will work for us, and if that’s one of the strate­gies avail­able, then so be it.”

Alexan­der did not elab­o­rate fur­ther but wished Grif­fith and for­mer Coast Guard Lt Cm­dr Nor­man Din­di­al a “Mer­ry Christ­mas”.

Last Mon­day, a me­dia re­lease from the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs con­firmed that ap­proval was giv­en for US mil­i­tary planes to use this coun­try’s air­ports in tran­sit.

When asked if this arrange­ment would man­date ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty and per­haps a lo­cal mil­i­tary pres­ence, Alexan­der said se­cu­ri­ty at the air­ports had been strength­ened well be­fore the ar­rival of US mil­i­tary forces in the re­gion.

Re­fer­ring to the de­ci­sion to as­sign snif­fer dogs and of­fi­cers from tac­ti­cal po­lice units to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on a more con­sis­tent ba­sis in June, Alexan­der said height­ened se­cu­ri­ty has al­ready been in place.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly every­thing that you con­sid­er vul­ner­a­ble must be ad­dressed and pro­tect­ed by the nec­es­sary re­sources, and there is no ex­cep­tion to the rules.

“Very ear­ly when I came in­to of­fice, the se­cu­ri­ty net­work at the air­port, with­out hav­ing all this go­ing on, was stepped up by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. The com­bi­na­tion of ef­forts is prov­ing quite well, and with every­body on the same page, suc­cess is im­mi­nent.”

Alexan­der al­so not­ed that the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), which is ex­pect­ed to end in 2026, was not the State’s an­ti-crime plan but was in­tend­ed to take note of T&T’s se­cu­ri­ty land­scape and in­tro­duce mech­a­nisms for long-term suc­cess.

He urged cit­i­zens to “be pa­tient” as the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to in­tro­duce more crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives.